Something to Point At
Cassie told me once she wished there could be two moons. We were sitting on a hill overlooking London towards sunset, and our own, singular moon had just come out for the evening. Cassie was telling me about a story she’d read once. In it, the main character wakes up very early one morning, and when he looks outside there is another, smaller moon next to our usual one.
“As though the moon had a little brother,” she put it.
“Why would you want that?” I asked.
“Because think about what that would mean. I mean, you see two moons, you know for sure everything’s changed, right? It couldn’t be any other way. Well, fine, maybe you’ve got a brain tumour or something, but I think on some level you’d know that wasn’t it, you know?”
“I suppose.”
“At least I would.”
“What do you mean, everything’s changed?”
“I’m not explaining it right. In the story, no one else notices anything’s wrong. That’s the key. Our man asks a few friends or family members or whatever, but they all seem to think there’s always been two moons. You understand?”
“So you want to feel crazy.”
“No. What? Why would I want that?”
“I don’t know; that’s just what it sounds like.”
“No, that’s not it. And you wouldn’t be crazy, that’s the whole point. There haven’t always been two moons, have there?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Right. So it’d have nothing to do with you. You get it? In the story, our man has entered a different world. Not a massively different world; it’s not like people have two heads or speak gibberish or whatever. All the people he knew from his old world are there, it’s just that at night, there are two moons in the sky instead of one. That’s it. That’s the only difference. But there is a difference.”
She plucked our bottle of wine from between my thighs and took a big swig. Somewhere behind me, a man playing loud European-style techno music rode by on a bicycle.
I still didn’t understand what Cassie was talking about. I wasn’t trying to be difficult; I really couldn’t wrap my head around it. I just couldn’t see what a second moon would do for her. So I asked, “If everything here on Earth is the same, who cares how many moons there are?”
“Because!” She replied, sounding much more upset than I had expected. “You’d know! You’d have something to point at and think, Yeah, look, I know it’s all changed. I’m not just imagining it; the people around me aren’t the same people I knew before. They may look it, they may act like it, but that second moon in the sky tells me clear as the light it reflects that they can’t be. They’re different. You’d know that, rather than just… feeling it.”
We looked at each other.
“Don’t you see?” She demanded. “Don’t you get how huge that would be?”
I nodded. “I do. You’re right; I see it now. Two moons. That would be nice.”
Cassie went on staring at me for another three or four seconds after this. She looked as though she’d been condemned to death for a crime I’d committed. Why don’t you say something? Her eyes seemed to ask. How could you just sit there like that?
But I didn’t know what to say.
Eventually she shook her head as if to ward off a bad dream, then exhaled and took another gulp of wine and sat back to rest on her elbows. After a little while I did the same. Neither of us said a word for a very long time after that.
Like I said at the start, this happened towards sunset. As the sky darkened, our moon grew gradually brighter in comparison. For all we watched in anticipation, however, it did not sprout a little brother.